


might be a battle, might not turn out okay

by mondaycore



Series: the last of the real ones [5]
Category: Formula 1 RPF
Genre: Alternate universe - Mafia, Dubious Consent, Emotional Manipulation, Gunplay, M/M, Mind Games, Phone Sex, Power Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-20
Updated: 2019-10-20
Packaged: 2020-12-24 18:27:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21104000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mondaycore/pseuds/mondaycore
Summary: Daniel’s expression turns in an instant from wariness and confusion to a hopeful, longing sort of hunger that has Charles stifling a smirk. There’s a reason he came here tonight. Not the least because Daniel, oh, he’s soeasy.





	might be a battle, might not turn out okay

**Author's Note:**

  * For [015255](https://archiveofourown.org/users/015255/gifts).

> annnnnnnnnnnnnnnnd we’re back to our regularly scheduled programming. this goes out to one — thanks a million for being so cash money, your comments and enthusiasm mean the most and inspire me to do better with each new thing i write. i hope you like this!!
> 
> contains gross misuse of firearms (sigh. again.), emotional manipulation, and a resulting scenario that may be construed as dubious consent. title by, well, you know.

The minute Charles cuts and runs from the disaster of a night — an intentional, calculated disaster, granted, of his own making — the sky cleaves open and it starts pouring like an act of divine retribution.

If it’s karma, then a ruined suit is fair enough recompense, he thinks as he raps sharply on the door before him. He’d been the only one to get out of that warehouse unscathed, but rainwater is just as hard to get out of silk and merino wool as blood, after all.

“We’ve been through this, man. You have to knock the secret password if you want to come in,” a muffled voice says from the other side of the door.

“Just let me in,” Charles says, deliberately injecting an imploring edge into his voice. "Please."

He’s barely finished speaking before latches click and locks are thrown and the door swings wide open.

“Charles?” Daniel asks. It’s so late that it’s early. He ought to be asleep. But instead he looks absolutely wired, like he hasn’t slept in days, shirtless and barefoot and framed in the bright light streaming out from the foyer behind him.

“Yes? Were you expecting someone else?” Charles asks.

“I, uh, no,” Daniel stammers, running a hand through his hair the way he does when he’s lying, further dishevelling himself. “You’re soaked. Were you out in the storm? Why are you here?”

“Maybe I just wanted to see you,” Charles says. He crosses his arms and curls in on himself a little and cuts his gaze down and to the side, to really sell it — _ I had a bad night, Daniel, I want — I need — _

Daniel’s expression turns in an instant from wariness and confusion to a hopeful, longing sort of hunger that has Charles stifling a smirk. There’s a reason he came here tonight. Not the least because Daniel, oh, he’s so _ easy. _

“Yeah, okay, come in,” he says, stepping aside. Charles trails him into the expansive, luxurious apartment and raises an eyebrow at the sight that greets him. Every available flat surface is covered with papers and maps and blueprints, sheaves and sheaves of file folders, reams of dossiers. There’s a half-disassembled pistol on the coffee table, cleaning rags and gun oil sitting nearby, which tells Charles what Daniel had been doing prior to his arrival. Gearing up for battle, apparently.

“Seems like you were expecting trouble,” Charles says. He sheds his suit jacket in a careless pile on the floor and wanders over to the nearest table, tiled with grainy black-and-white surveillance photos. Lawrence and Lance Stroll, eating lunch together. Sergio Perez in his Sunday best, leaving church with his wife and children. Lawrence again, out golfing. “Racing Point?”

“The Pepto-Bismol cunts want to take us to High Council arbitration. Can you fucking believe it?”

“What? Why?” Charles asks, interested in spite of himself. The squabbling affairs of the lesser houses rarely interest him, in the way a wolf does not usually concern itself with a pack of mangy street dogs — unless it’s hungry and wants an easy meal, of course — but getting the High Council involved is not a move to be taken lightly. The pedantic old bastards are ordinarily content enough to let the syndicates fight it out amongst each other, to grease palms and slap wrists only when it gets too over the line. Charles suspects he himself will be summoned at some point to receive yet another interminable lecture for the mess he’d caused tonight. But for one house to directly petition the Council against another? The fallout could be explosive, chaotic, and thus, intriguing.

“For _ unfairly breaching the terms of our alliance_. Bullshit. Those cowards just know they can’t win in a fight with us, so they just — go snitching to — to — ”

Daniel flounders as Charles, innocently maintaining eye contact, digs two fingers into the knot of his tie and cants his head up and pulls it loose. He lets the fabric snake through his fingers as it falls to the ground, feeling Daniel’s burning gaze on the line of his throat.

“But you and Nico won’t let that happen,” Charles says, indicating the state of the war room they stand in. He starts on the buttons of his shirt, biting his lip as in pretend concentration as he sloughs off the wet, near-translucent silk plastered to his skin.

“The best defense is a good offense,” Daniel says, unsteadily. He swallows hard and watches, rapt and stupid as a worshipper, as Charles slowly, ostentatiously strips all the way down to his underwear, rainwater dripping from his hair and sluicing off his body and puddling on the pristine tile beneath him. “Charles — ”

As if on cue, Charles’ phone rings.

“Excuse me,” he says, crouching down and fishing it out of his sodden heap of clothing. The name on the screen is exactly who he’s expecting it to be. Exactly who he _ wants _ it to be. He stalks over to the couch, perches himself on the armrest, and answers the call. “Hi, Max.” 

He smothers an unkind laugh at the way Daniel perks up immediately, like a dog at a whistle. 

“What the fuck is wrong with you, Charles?” Max spits, by way of greeting. “What the hell were you thinking?”

“That’s a good question,” Charles says flatly. “I could ask you the same thing. Why did you make a move to capture Mercedes’ shipment tonight without telling me first?”

“What, so now I have to tell you everything I’m doing, all the time? Piss off.”

“You have to tell me when it’s something that could benefit the both of us,” Charles snaps, raising his voice. He takes a deep breath, modulating himself. “You wanted this partnership. So you have to abide by it. You don’t get to go off on your own and get the unfair advantage.”

“What — I — you don’t get to say _ shit _ about the _ unfair advan _ — Jesus Christ — so if you can’t have something, then nobody can? Is that it? That's very mature of you.”

“Funny, you didn’t complain when Alex did the exact same thing to Lando’s operation.”

“That’s different, and you know it.”

“It’s only different because it didn’t happen to you,” Charles says. “I was just evening the odds.” Not that barging in on an operation, guns akimbo and triggers hot, is the most subtle or elegant way to do it — seems like he’s been spending too much time with Grosjean and Kvyat of late. It’d gotten messy. Bloody-messy, dead bodies-messy. But it’d sufficed.

“_You tried to kill me, asshole!” _ Max yells. Charles dispassionately holds the phone away from his ear until the noise dies down.

“No, I _ shot _ you. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead,” he says. “I almost shot Lewis, too, but he’s not calling me up to bitch about it.” No guarantees what it’s like at _ Syndikat _ HQ right now, though. Lewis is probably directing and acting in his very own award-winning soap opera right now. Making Valtteri the PA fetch his coffee and all. How Toto and Bono have the patience, God only knows. “These incidents happen, it’s part of the business. Don’t be so dramatic — _ sit _ down.”

Daniel, who’d returned to the task of cleaning and reassembling his weapon for lack of anything better to do, jittering his leg and shooting over nervous, anticipatory glances the entire time, had made an aborted movement toward Charles at the word _ shot_. But on Charles’ sharp command, he balks and pulls himself back, a wounded look on his face.

“Who was that? Who are you with?” Max demands.

“An old friend of yours,” Charles says, putting the call on speakerphone. “I think he wants to say hello.”

“Max, are you alright?” Daniel asks, lunging again toward the phone.

“Daniel?” Max says, disbelieving, and then, icily enraged, “Charles, this is a new low for you. Get the fuck out of his apartment.”

“What, you’re gonna come over and make me?” he asks, knowing full-well that even if Max wanted to, he couldn’t. He’s holed up in some safehouse in the boonies, nursing a gunshot wound to the shoulder, waiting out the storm that’s making the roads impassable.

“What are you doing with him? This is between us. Don’t get him involved in this.”

“Nobody’s involved in anything,” Charles says, syrupy-sweet. “He’s my friend. Can’t I visit a friend?”

“Kick him out, Daniel. Don’t let him stay there.” 

“Don’t tell him what to do,” Charles says. “He doesn’t belong to you anymore.” 

Daniel makes a pained noise at that, and Charles smirks. Even he isn’t certain what exactly happened between the two, the spectacular nuclear meltdown that’d happened when or because Daniel had defected to Renault. It’d been Daniel’s decision to leave, Charles knows that much for certain. And he also knows that, while Max might play the role of the reckless heartless asshole, pretending he doesn’t give a shit, he still feels the betrayal probably more than Daniel does, at this point — feels it deeply, and acutely, and furiously.

It was admirable of Daniel, in a way. It took a lot of balls to make such a stupid decision with such brazen confidence. Max was born into this life, son of the mob, had been taught from birth to go through life taking what he wanted and holding onto it at whatever cost. He’s not the type to let something of his go so easily.

But then again, the fact that Max is trying to keep Daniel out from between him and Charles, like that’d protect him somehow if Charles really wanted to do something to him — the fact that Daniel’s still _ alive_ at all, after his act of high treason against a house not known for being kind to those that disappoint them — that means there’d been something genuine between them, after all.

Which just makes this all the sweeter.

Charles picks himself up and drops himself into Daniel’s lap, straddling his legs, draping his arms around his shoulders, phone still in hand. He tucks in closely, chest to chest, Daniel a hard line of feverish heat against his damp, rain-chilled skin.

“Shh, relax,” Charles says, and puts his mouth to Daniel’s neck, laves at the skin there, antiseptic before the sting, tastes salt, bares teeth, bites down hard. Daniel tips his head back, tries and fails to suppress a moan. Charles smiles in vengeful satisfaction. He knows that carried over the airwaves. He knows that Max knows.

“If we’re done here, Max, I have some business I’d like to attend to,” he says, purposefully breathless, innuendous.

“You cocksucking little whore,” Max growls, angrier than Charles has ever heard him. He can almost imagine it, Max with his fists clenched and teeth gritted, pacing around in that way he does, pent-up bestial fury with nowhere to vent. The connection goes unsteady, crackling with static, as if sympathetic to his anger. “You sick-in-the-head degenerate.”

“Mmm, fuck yeah, talk me off, baby,” Charles croons, rutting against Daniel’s thigh, slow and sinuous. Daniel whimpers in the back of his throat, eyes tightly shut, wound tight as a tripwire. “You know I love it when you’re angry at me.”

“Daniel,” Max says. “Take the phone from Charles. Let’s talk, just the two of us.” 

It might just be a figment of his imagination or a consequence of the tenuous cell connection, but it seems that Max's voice has taken on a pleading edge. Charles could _ laugh_. 

“You think he’ll still listen to you?” Charles says.

He reaches behind him toward the coffee table, gropes for the gun and finds it, throws the safety, cocks the hammer. He pries Daniel’s fingers open and puts the weapon into its owner’s hand, maneuvers Daniel’s arm so the muzzle of the gun rests against his own cheek, a circle of fiery-cold steel branding his skin. Daniel keens, shutting his eyes in something like penitential apology.

“You’re dead, Charles,” Max snarls. I swear to God, I’m going to kill you, I’m going to fucking kill you — ”

“Kill me, then,” Charles says. “He’s got a gun on me, Max. Tell him to pull the trigger.”

He turns his head a little, lets the barrel of the gun slide between his lips, scrape past his teeth, and push all the way to the soft place at the back of his throat. He tilts his phone up, taps the camera and takes a photo, the loaded weapon in his mouth, his tongue curled around it, his hair falling in his eyes, a small flash of tawny-gold skin stark against his pale complexion, his expression liquid, languid, self-satisfied, half-dazed, entirely obscene. He texts it over.

He knows Max receives it because the steady stream of threats and swearing suddenly falls dead-silent, replaced for several long, long minutes of dead air and the sound of harsh panting.

“Do it,” Max says, low and dark and dangerous. “Come on, Daniel. Pull the trigger, kill that backstabbing little slut — ”

“Yeah, Max, make him do it,” Charles taunts, mumbling around the gun barrel in his mouth. Daniel’s hand trembles, once, and Charles feels a spike of delicious, adrenaline-laden fear go right to his dick, but he’s not getting that much out of this otherwise. Because he knows that Daniel _ won’t. _

He won’t do it. He’ll do just about anything to prove, mostly to himself, that he’d broken it off with Max and defected to Renault with the intention of never looking back. That he’ll never let himself be _controlled_ the way he had been, ever again. 

He’s an incredibly stubborn man, and incredibly stupid, sentimental, emotional, honorable, reckless, immature. He’s an unrepentant killer when he wants to be, when he has to be. But at his core, he’s nothing but worn edges and helpless mercy. Pets every dog he sees, keeps spare change in his pockets for the panhandlers on the street, always offers up the last bite of whatever he's eating. Put a pretty defenseless young thing with a cute smile and an air of the tragic in front of him and he'll move heaven and earth to protect them, even at a disastrous cost to himself — Charles would know, Daniel's been in love/in lust with him forever. It's almost like he’s compensating for the other half of himself. And he’s incredibly brave, above all else, for not hiding any of it, in a world where such behavior would otherwise get you marked and killed. Christian and Marko had twisted him into something unrecognizable, and Charles has always suspected that’s the real reason why he left and never wants to go back, that it had nothing to do with Max at all.

There are many great men in this business, but there’s only one good one. It’s not Max, it’s certainly not him, it’s not any of the others. It’s Daniel Ricciardo.

Unfortunately, it all makes him _ so incredibly easy _ to use. 

Charles draws them both down so they’re horizontal on the couch and Daniel goes willingly, the gun still jammed in Charles’ mouth, an almost-grounding weight upon his tongue.

“_Kill him_,” Max screams, a harsh jumble of noise, blowing out the speakers, “_kill him, kill him_ — ”

Daniel does his best to obey by putting a hand around Charles' neck, but gently. Charles urges him on — more, harder, faster, the heel of Daniel's hand crushing against his windpipe, one of his legs pushed up between Daniel's. Daniel shudders, surrenders, and pushes against him, not even bothering to hide the noises he’s making anymore — and it’s frantic and sloppy and desperate until his movements stutter and grow erratic, and Charles makes sure Max can hear it when Daniel comes with a low sobbing whine, right into the mouthpiece of the phone.

“Daniel,” Max cries, actually and really _ crying, _ and Charles allows himself a single victorious sliver of a smile before he hits _ end call _ and lets the phone drop from his hand, clattering to the floor. He pushes the weapon from his mouth and Daniel collapses atop him, a heavy, solid weight that burns with heat, a branding iron, a blazing star.

“Christ, Christ,” Daniel says, in a near-whisper. Charles feels droplets against his skin again, not cold rainwater, but searing hot tears. Outside, the storm rages ever-harder, the wind screaming in fury, rain and hail battering against the floor-to-ceiling windows, the world in upheaval, purging itself of the filth that scums up the streets of the city. “I couldn’t, Charles — why would he make me — I thought we — I thought he still — ”

_ Loved me_, Charles finishes, which, God, is almost sweet, almost pathetic. 

“It’s okay, Daniel,” Charles says. “I knew you wouldn’t.” 

"I wouldn't — I'd never," Daniel says, incoherent, half-understood. "And Charles, you'd never — "

Charles dances light fingers down Daniel’s back, along the jut of his backbone, soothing without words — for without words, he cannot perjure himself. And when Daniel finally calms down, falling deep asleep for probably the first time in ages, Charles licks his lips and thinks: he’s savored many victories before but it's never tasted like this, of all things. Like metal, and gun oil, and saltpeter.

**Author's Note:**

> me @ myself: ..... bitch what ..... the fuck .........
> 
> per the standard: this is a work of fiction, please do not involve the real world and the real people mentioned herein. as an additional request, please do not link out my fic on public platforms outside of ao3 (tumblr, twitter, etc. — not that it’s happened, and oh god why would anyone want to. just forestalling the circumstance. private sharing is totally fine.), much appreciated! and as always, thanks to all y’all for reading, and hope you enjoyed this!


End file.
